Coincidence or Divine Reckoning?

In mid-August, 1998, Jane Bovard opened an abortion mill in downtown Fargo. The new killing center is at 512 First Avenue North, right next door to the Vogel Law Firm,whose address is 502 First Avenue North.

The Vogel firm is a pro-abort Democratic Party establishment which has been zealous in the support of abortion. When the state of North Dakota enacted waiting period legislation for abortion, the Vogel Law Firm was local counsel for a challenge to the legislation brought by the abortion flagship Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. The plaintiff in the case, whom Vogel represented, was the Fargo Women’s Health Organization, Bovard’s former employer.

FWHO opened in 1981 and was Fargo’s first and only abortion mill until Bovard brought the killing industry downtown in August of 1998. When a Mandan woman brought a lawsuit against FWHO for a botched abortion, Jane Vogelwede of the Vogel firm represented the defendant abortionist, George Miks. Miks is a circuit-rider serial killer who flies his own plane from city to city in the upper midwest — hopping from mill to mill in the National Women’s Health Organization circuit.

North Dakota Supreme Court justice Beryl Levine, recently retired, also hailed from the Vogel law firm. She was the most militantly pro-abort justice in North Dakota history — known as an avant garde feminist in the law.

The Vogel Firm is the largest and most prosperous law firm in Fargo. It is housed in its own freestanding building. This handsome building, which has its own parking lot, stands on the corner of First Avenue North and North Fifth Street in downtown Fargo. On another corner of that intersection is the Forum building, home of Fargo’s monopoly daily newspaper. The Forum is also an abortion-friendly enterprise. Although the owner claims to be pro-life, his true affection is for commerce. Since abortion is a business, it has respect in his eyes. Whenever any practical action is taken or steps proposed to end abortion, the Forum brings out its most vitriolic prose in opposition. The poor Lambs of Christ — Christian missionaries to the unborn who sacrificed their freedom for life — were regular targets of the Forum’s opprobrium. Recently in the summer of 1998, when Patrick Say proposed licensing abortion clinics, the Forum blasted him with its full armory of ridicule and name-calling. The Vogel Law Firm are attorneys for the Forum.

Fargo’s largest law firm and its dominant newspaper have been allies of the abortion industry. Now, perhaps as a reward for their faithfulness, they have an abortion boutique in the neighborhood. The new Red River Women’s Clinic sits on First Avenue North adjacent to the Vogel parking lot and within easy viewing distance from the Forum building across the street. Has the Vogel Firm or the Forum raised a peep of protest about a killing factory in the neighborhood? No. Vogel’s main concern is that pro -life picketers and sidewalk counselors might stray onto the sidewalk in front of its building and lower the tone of the neighborhood. The Forum is serenely indifferent to the slaughter occurring across the street. No picketer from either establishment has appeared to protest the downtown visitation of the abortion holocaust.

But perhaps someone else took notice. The Grim Reaper has visited both establishments in prominent ways within a short period of time. This past summer, while Bovard was gearing up to open, President Clinton filled a vacancy on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals with attorney John Kelly, a partner of the Vogel Firm. This was surely the most prestigious event ever to occur to this firm, eclipsing Beryl Levine’s appointment to the state supreme court. Alas, in mid-October, barely a few weeks into his new duties, Kelly, age 64, was struck with a sudden illness and died on October 21st. His funeral in St. Mary’s Cathedral brought together the local judicial and political establishment.

Then, without warning, on December 2, 1998, Joe Dill, long-time editor of the Forum suddenly collapsed and died. His funeral was held at Holy Spirit Catholic Church on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1998.

Is God speaking? Are his nostrils filled with the stench of innocent blood and is he now touching the institutions which have been so prominent in protecting the slaughter of infants in this city? Our local power brokers have chosen to protect man’s power of life-and-death over the child in the womb. Is God now asserting his power over all life, including the proud born? Dill was only 63; Kelly was 64. They died in their prime. Dill coincidentally was appointed editor of the Forum in 1981, about six months before the Fargo Women’s Health Organization opened. He presided for 17 years over an editorial policy that had no sympathy for those who equated the unborn with the born. Is God is now equalizing the equation?

When the Forum and the Vogel Firm sat back indifferent to opening of a killing factory on their doorstep, perhaps the Almighty said: “Now it is your turn.” Now your proud rulership over the innocent blood is going to be marked with evidence of your own mortality. For those who understand the grim and inevitable consequences of America’s bloodlust compact with death and hell in the slaughter of the innocent, these two untimely and unexpected deaths appear as a message of mercy from him who wishes all men to know that, though he is merciful and longsuffering, his justice will not sleep forever. “As you sow, ye shall reap.”

Or is it just a coincidence that two influential Catholics who served the devil in the abortion slaughter have suddenly perished in brief proximity in time to each other whilst their new neighbor just off the corner of First Avenue North and Fifth Street continues to make cole slaw out of human life? Maybe God knows how to make salad too.

The Prince of Egypt, a new film about the deliverance of God’s people from Egypt, is soon to hit the theatres. After Pharaoh said no enough times, God touched his own and mourning arose in Egypt. Has his finger of judgment and warning now touched a certain intersection of pro-abort power in Fargo?